French Lavender

I got some of the french lavender with the weird thistly heads after admiring it in Leen's back garden. I like the strange shapes. I am inspired by the drawings in the Japanese art series currently on TV and by some great monochrome prints of plants I saw in the Royal Academy annual exhibition.

It is ironic that this is a plant drawing as I currently have terrible hayfever but I think it is from the trees.

Balcony Update

As I was super busy this weekend, here is a filler post until I paint something. I am very pleased with my balcony at the mo, with this Provence style flower group of sunflowers, lavender and 'misc climbers'. It didn't specify on the seed packet but they look like weeds to me.

My tomato plants are fruiting, one fruit is turning red, and I have basil seedlings. The formerly bleak, claustrophobic, concretey, balcony is now summery and lovely and you can sit out on it with a drink while nervously watching for ants and spiders.

Once these flowers are over I might need to pop out to the teeny garden centre by the station for some more colourful things...

Artists at Home

Today we went to the Artists at Home in Chiswick. It is worth looking out for these fantastic free events where you can visit artists homes or studios and chat to them about their work. Highly recommended for art enthusuasts or just if you like seeing other people's homes and gardens. 

The one I enjoyed most was the sculptor and life drawing artist Michael French. He lives on the ground floor of this fascinating old house in a wonderfully bohemian studio of tatty decor, antique furniture and life sculpture overlooking a jungly garden. Such a lovely bloke he talked to us for ages about his work, his inspirations and even where to find good art classes.

The homes of artists are always really interesting and full of inspiration. 

Nasturtiums

An experimental work here, with coloured ink. Trying to go bolder with colour and line. These nasturtiums are growing in a pot on my balcony. I am obsessed with their round leaves and vivid orange flowers and wibbly stems. They are also so easy to grow from seed, an ideal plant.

Balcony is looking good at the mo with these, sunflowers, bright blue borage flowers and my tomato and strawberry plants are doing well.

I am giving up on the back garden in that just when it was getting better two handymen came along and ripped out all the plants, good and bad, and then just left the bits strewn everywhere. Let's just say they won't be appearing on Gardener's World any time soon.

Van Gogh ish

I grew a tiny sunflower on my balcony. It's rather wibbly and shrivelled appearance looked fun to draw. I used my new bamboo dip pen I bought from my favourite art shop when we were in Paris. It makes a lovely variable, flowing, chaotic line. Really fun to draw with. This is also from life which I think always improves the results. My aim is to get the personality of what I am painting rather than the accuracy.